India media tech supplier Amagi secures $95m

Norwest Venture Partners and Avataar Ventures also participated. It comes six months after Accel, Norwest, Avataar, and Premji Invest provided USD 100m. That round facilitated exits for Mayfield India and Emerald Media, an Asian entertainment platform backed by KKR.

Amagi provides cloud broadcast and targeted advertising software-as-a-service (SaaS) products to traditional TV and streaming platforms. The service offering covers creation, distribution, and monetisation of live, linear, and on-demand channels across cable, over-the-top (OTT) and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platforms.

Revenue is said to have grown 108% in the past year, driven significantly by growth in the FAST space. During the same period, ad impressions generated using Amagi’s Thunderstorm platform were said to have grown 11%. In 2021, the number of customers onboarded grew 59% year-on-year.

The company supports about 650 content brands, 800 playout chains, and 2,000 channel deliveries on its platform in more than 40 countries. Clients include NBCUniversal, Paramount, A+E Networks UK, Samsung TV Plus, Roku, VIZIO, LG Channels, Tastemade, USA Today, AccuWeather, Fubo, STIRR, Redbox, and Rakuten TV.

Since its inception in 2009, operations have grown to encompass a broadcast operations centre in New Delhi, an innovation centre in Bangalore, and bases across Singapore, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, and Paris. A USD 35m Series D came in 2016 featuring Emerald and Mayfield. Previous investors also include Nadathur Holdings & Investments and Ojas Venture Partners.

The latest investment will help grow the international footprint and develop the product portfolio with a view to increasing sales 5x globally. This effort will include exploration of allied and adjunct opportunities in the cloud and video market to deliver greater impact across the value chain, as well as potential M&A activity that can contribute to revenue or technology capabilities.

“As the most preferred media SaaS company in the world, Amagi is leading the booming M&E [media and entertainment] industry to greater heights of technological innovation and strategic growth,” Shekhar Kirani, a partner at Accel, said in a statement. “Amagi’s impressive momentum is a direct result of its cutting-edge products, superior customer experience and talented leadership.”

Amagi represents the B2B and back-end support strengths of India’s booming consumer media technology scene. It estimates video streaming represents a nearly USD 50bn global market opportunity in terms of cloud-based services in areas such as advertising and improving viewer loyalty.

“The media industry has been swept up in a content storm with consumers demanding high-quality, personalized content at faster-than-ever turnaround speeds,” Nishant Rao, a founding partner of Avataar, added. "Amagi has enabled major media players to stay relevant in these times of change, while helping them to extract nearly 40% operational savings through cloud solutions.”

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Support services
• Media
• Expansion
• India
• Accel Partners
• Norwest Venture Partners
• Avataar Venture Partners